"Now I'll sit back and start counting how many posts it will take before some science type accuses me of being ignorant :)"

I am just such a science type. I don't think you're ignorant, but let me at least explain my point of view and see if I can show ya where you went wrong. :)

"And it's continuing failure to provide answers that matter to most people, save a few enthusiasts here and there, is to me clear indication that science matters much less than science-lovers think."

If people aren't fulfilled with the answers science provides, that to me is a clear indication that we need to pursue scientific answers more and more deliberately. If people accept the answers religion provides over the answers science provides, they are deluding themselves. Pretty as the picture religion hands out may be, it is not a reliable one. The scientific method is historically the only method in which we arrive at the correct answers, or at least move in the right direction. And science is always evolving, while religion stays stagnant.

People used to say that the earth was created in six days. When this was shown to be a scientific impossibility, modern day fundamentalists say that they really meant God-days. Since any amount of time is divisible by six, a God-day may be any concievable amount of time, making this claim an irritating one to refute.

You don't see this kind of wishy-washy interpretations in science. When newtonian physics was replaced by relativity and quantum physics, you didn't have bands of fundamentalist Newtonites claiming that you could actually go faster than light. Science evolved. This is the most basic advantage that science has over almost all other lines of thought: it admits it's wrong.

But the accuracy of the answers we currently have isn't as important as their implications: we are moving in the right direction. And even if we never reach a T.O.E., does it really matter? What can possibly be wrong with the search for knowledge in an infinitely complex universe? What can possibly be wrong with digging up answers that contradict people's chosen beliefs? Is happiness more important than knowledge? If you were skydiving and your parachute wouldn't open, would you want to know, or would you say "well, there's nothing I can do about it, I'd rather not know" and go to sleep?